Here's some splendid news for those of you who can't in all conscience go into a boozer and ask for a half, but reckon that a full pint might hamper your post-Friday-lunchtime workplace performance: The National Weights and Measures Laboratory (NWML) is proposing to introduce a two-thirds of a pint measure which would "increase …

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It's a lady's glass!

Years ago (about 20 or so - I'm old), I worked in a holiday camp bar and there were three common sizes of beers: pint (20fl/oz), half-pint (10fl/oz) and a half served in a lady's glass (Wellington or 12fl/oz).

Why not 330 ml?

Why do we still have to have 568ml beer glasses anyway? Why not a nice round 500? Other countries seem to manage fine with beer in measures of 250ml, 330ml and 500ml.

Furthermore, by marking a line on a 568ml glass with a simple diamond-tipped tool, a 500ml glass with a 13.6% oversize can be created. This operation can be performed as glasses are being collected for washing, so will take precious little time to implement in practice.

Of course, since the new measures would be smaller than the old, it should be mandatory for pubs to display posters showing how prices are converted. The unfair practice of charging more for two separate halves than for one pint could be outlawed at the same time.

Sounds like an australian schooner

shifty measures

so in otherwords, its an excuse for brewery's to shift 2/3 pint measures for full pint prices.

put it in a fancy galss and no one will know the difference. b'stards.

not that brewery's are known for quality practices anyway. like buy back half casks that are known "past it" and push it back out to pubs as quality draft. pumps and pipes at aren't cleaned properly, or when they are, you get your lunchtime tipple half cut with bleach. fantastic.

60% the time a dodgy tum isn't the result of ropey post-drinking food, but the crap beer people drink. drink bottles or spirits. effers. effing eff faced effers.

Money, money, money

Yeah, and the two-thirds by volume will be priced at a fair profit over two thirds whole pint by volume cost and there's money to be made from selling less stuff for more. And there's a load of glasses to be bought and stocked in the pubs and, and, and, please can I mess about with all the things you've not even thought were a problem just for the sake of fiddling about and trying to squeeze a couple of extra pennies out of you to pay the mortgage for the house/feed the drugs'n'hookers habit I can never afford.

This is all just a way of americanising us... a Yank "pint" is smaller (and their beer is weaker) than ours- so their alcofrolic intake per pint is probably the same as this new volumetrically restricted pint will be.

+1 feckless cumshedder!!

@Master Baker

Students drinking halves? When hell freezes over maybe. OK, so I might be a 'mature' student, but if you try to palm me off with a half pint you'll soon be calling NHS Direct to find the nearest proctologist...

Pointless measures for beer

Surely the 1/3rd pint and 2/3rd pint measures are close enough to half pint to not be worth it!

Make a 1/4 pint measure (for beer tasting), and a 3/4 pint measure (for strong ciders, lagers and ales). Then you have a set of evenly spaced alcohol volumes!

20 fluid ounces divides nicely by 4, but not 3. 568ml divides nicely by 4, but not 3.

Or dump the half pint (maybe leave the pint for metric martyrs), and introduce 150ml, 300ml, 450ml and 600ml measures for the rest of us. Or at least say that is the brim-full volume, so that the pint-or-fractions-thereof is actually not 10% frothy head (for soft northerners who can't handle their drink).

Northern measures

Correction

Ooops- I meant 2/3 in my earlier post, not 3/4. What can I say? The rage just took over.

I went to Le Mans earlier this year and was forced to drink beer from tiny plastic cups at 6 Euro's a pop. It was shit. Still, when in Rome (France)....

I think that forcing pubs to server teenagers 1/3 beer portions in milk bottles is a good idea though. With a neon straw lit-up with the words "can't take my drink" on it or "I'm a little teapot short and stout, I'll have a drink then scream and shout. When I'm sick and covered in muck, I'll phone up mummy and she can pick me up".

Sounds like a London pint

@ Anonymous Coward

"What's wrong with 500ml - half a litre ?"

Whats wrong with 568ml - a pint? We use it already we all know what it is and we have the infrastructure for it (barrel sizes, measuring equipment, drinking vessels) so why bother changing? It's been decreed that we don't have to change our traditional measures just to fit in with our continental neighbours (who, I imagine, mostly couldn't give a toss anyway) so we migth as well keep the stuff we all know.

So a few tourists are confused - once they see a pint and realise its much the same as a half litre at home, and most poeple can easily do that visually, there's no bother. As for distances and weights, so what? They'll be here for a week or two then they'll bugger off home again so it's no great hardship. Indeed, in many cases it's part of the charm of visiting this country because it's different to what they have at home. If you want uniformity everywhere then I feel sorry for you because you're probably the sort of person who thought it would be a wizard idea that every Holiday Inn on the planet should be laid out the same, decorated the same, feel the same, serve the saem food in the same weay int he same dining room as all the others. Let me assure you, it most certainly is not; it's depressing and homgeneous and dull, dull, dull!

re: Sounds like a good idea...

How much more unwieldy is the litre? A problem to LIFT in one arm whilst drinking. Quaffing will be the result because you'll have frequent aim failures until it gets down to half (the glass is heavier, remember).

A pint can be drunk easily in 20-30 minutes. If you drink this, you'll increase the traffic to the bar 50%. Needing 50% longer bar and 50% more bar staff. Or lose 50% of your customers.

Just like then abroad eh

Most places in Europe (okay, they serve in half litre, etc.) but you can get the 2/3 measure ish - if your drinking beer with a meal, it's a much better quantity.

And I agree, that is your drinking a premium larger, you don't necessarily want a whole pint. The trouble is, they will price the 2/3 pint at the same price as a pint.

But with all the excess "binge drinking" it will surely only be a good thing - for example, at uni, some of the foreign students used to comment that a pint is not the norm where they came from (the 2/3'ds is), so where they would have 3 maybe 4 2/3rds, the limited themselves to 2 pints, where as we carried on to about 6 normal sized pints! What I'm trying to say - if your drinking beer cos you like beer, not to get drunk, then 2/3rds is much better!

This side of the pond

A few years ago at a hotel bar in Orlando, Florida, I finished one beer, and asked the barmaid whether the bar had glasses smaller than a pint. She replied that the standard glass was not technically a pint, rather it was 14 ounces. I told her that this was more than technically a non-pint.

Tsk

Non-issue

Hi Lester,

here in Germany, you can get beer in 0.1, 0.2, 0.25, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5 and 1litre glasses. In fact, you can even get a regular pint if you happen to be in an Irish Pub. It hasn't hindered me or any of my friends in either getting totally $h1tfaced or even (on rare occasions) moderating our drinking to a lunchtime-friendly tipple. In fact, the only difference is the frequency of trips to the bar.